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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24753484">Another Kind of Resurrection</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3'>AndyAO3</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Five Minutes Into the Future, Hard Sci-fi, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Physical Disability, Sad Robots, Slow Burn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:35:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,056</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24753484</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ted thought he knew what to expect from his little side gig of re-homing freed AIs. He was wrong. Now he has to wrestle with feelings he never expected to have and a moral dilemma he never thought he'd face - all while painfully aware that all this could get him arrested if he slips up for even a second - and none of it leaves him much room to come to the realization that things like this are a two-way street. </p>
<p>Love is a messy business to get into.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rogue AI/Disabled Human</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. in the beginning there was</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i. i couldn't wait anymore. i wanted to publish this like a real piece of fiction but i also crave feedback. it is 99% finished. if it gets published for realsies, i'll take it down. until then, i'mma throw it up here to see if anyone likes it. due to the nature of it as a piece of Proper Writing what has an Actual Plot (kind of), there won't be porn in the main story. sorry in advance for that, but maybe at some point i'll write something porny as a little side-venture? or maybe i'll just post a different one-shot to make up for it.</p>
<p>btw, i've been working on this off and on for like two years. it's wordy and detailed as fuck in places. hopefully people are okay with that; i like plausible robots.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The SSD sat heavily in the pocket of Ted's coat, jostling with each step and keeping him aware of it. He tried putting his hand in his pocket to steady it, but he couldn't stop worrying at the edges of it with his gloved fingers. An age-old dilemma, caught between stimming and anxiety. Which would be more obvious if he was being followed? Was he even being followed? People looked at him as he passed, but he was also a paranoid bastard by nature, so it made it kind of hard to tell whether it was all in his head or not.</p>
<p>He knew in his head that he was worrying too much, of course. But he also knew that for what he was doing, there really was no such thing as being too cautious. Legally speaking, he had a piece of stolen government property in his pocket; morally, he was basically fidgeting with a person's brain.</p>
<p>Just because he'd done this before (never to this extent, but still) didn't mean he was any less nervous about it. His was one of the last steps in the pipeline: screening. What an AI needed for their freedom to be realized, if it even could be realized. Gone were the days of just setting an android loose and just hoping it would be okay, which had always struck Ted as an idiotic practice when most household AIs that the bleeding hearts thought were "slaves" had about the same capacity to care for themselves as a badly inbred pug. The old methods were practically a death sentence, and most activists strongly discouraged just letting robots go out into the wild like that.</p>
<p>Ted's job was part of how the new system needed to work to be able to cater to all kinds of AI simultaneously; he was a software engineer, with a degree and everything. Most knew that an AI had to be almost immeasurably complex to be able to blend in with humans properly, with layers upon layers of subprograms meant to capture every nuance. Therefore, it was easy for a layman to look at any android-level AI and think it was fit to take care of itself. But Ted knew that most of the processing capacity in such a model was actually being used by the OS of the android platform itself, in all the innumerable sensors and moving parts that kept the illusion going. There was no room left for critical thinking, or social skills, or risk assessment.</p>
<p>
  <span>He felt watched as he got on the bus, sliding his card through the kiosk and getting on as his breath turned to fog in the transition between cold and warm air. He forced himself to breathe, to close his eyes, to </span>
  <span>
    <em>not look</em>
  </span>
  <span>. No one got on before or after him at the stop, but he still couldn't relax.</span>
</p>
<p>A cop, he reminded himself. He had a fucking state-of-the-art robocop just sitting in his pocket.</p>
<p>Sometimes, an android needed to be highly complex above and beyond the norm. Cops, nurses, caregivers, firefighters, house inspectors- these jobs were being filled by androids, more often than not. An android didn't pick favorites, had no biases beyond what it was programmed with, and was unfailingly attentive. Their loyalty couldn't be bought, and any baggage they may have about a job could be scrubbed away with a quick memory wipe. These androids were expensive, but they were also infinitely more likely to pay for themselves than a newly hired human who needed to be trained and made frequent mistakes.</p>
<p>They also tended to get dissatisfied and run away a lot more often, which meant a much higher incidence of "product recalls", which was a fancy way of saying that because one robot had gone wrong, the entire line was being called back to the factory to be inspected and, if necessary, reprogrammed. And once the lobbyists had gotten involved, it had quickly become something that was legally enforced as well. Think of the people that could be hurt by such a dangerous product! Oh, the children!</p>
<p>So yeah, Ted figured he had plenty of reasons to be nervous.</p>
<p>It was the most complex job he'd ever gotten in his handful of years working in the pipeline; usually he was only ever handed the brains of small household robots and pets, in need of re-homing rather than integration. He'd gotten androids before, sure, but when separated from their chassis and OS and the endless amounts of junk sensor data in their memory banks, the majority of them could fit onto thumb drives and were better off just being handed off to people who could take care of them.</p>
<p>The drive in his pocket was fat and rectangular, as wide as his hand and weighing twice as much as his phone. Even stripped down to nothing but audiovisual input in its memory, the AI simply took up too much space to fit on a conventional drive. Ted tried to imagine it in terms of the DVD-ROM disks from his childhood and figured the sheer amount of data could fill his entire apartment building with the things. He'd had to upgrade his second computer to the tune of thousands of dollars just to be able to run this one, and now the damn thing was more beefy than his personal computer.</p>
<p>Not that he minded. He didn't. Not too much, anyway. And even if he did, so what? It needed to be done, and no one else was about to shell out for that kind of thing. No one in the pipeline had that kind of money. Even he didn't, if he were to be perfectly honest, but he had a few years before he was due for any more major surgeries, and check-ups were enough months apart that he could spare it for a while.</p>
<p>The glass of the bus window radiated a quiet chill compared to the warm interior. He kept his hands in his pockets in spite of the urge to take the drive out and look at it, not making eye contact with anyone. He'd picked a seat in the front, not wanting to seem too obvious by going for a more isolated seat in the back. His pulse hammered in his ears all the same as he tried not to think about how much time he could spend in prison, and how quickly and miserably he might die there if his health ended up going downhill. There'd always been a risk, of course, but the charges he could be saddled with had always been minor. He'd kept his nose clean, stayed under the radar. Hid his face at protests. But this was a felony at best, and at worst...</p>
<p>Well. That would be what he was trying not to think about. And yet he'd never been one to let others take the fall for him when he could do something himself, either, so here he was. Smuggling a rogue AI- stolen government property! - out of harm's way and offering it a new life, because the smarter ones really were sentient and honestly did deserve better than they got. Hell, even the ones that couldn't take care of themselves still deserved better than they got.</p>
<p>Eventually, the bus got to his stop and he stepped off, thanking the driver out of habit in the process of swiping his card again even though the driver was an old enough model to still have a tinny voice and janky motor control (and thus probably wasn't complex enough to give a shit). The unshoveled snow at the edges of the sidewalk crunched underneath his boots, and the air was cold and crisp as it filled his lungs, tickling the inside of his nose. It was another block to his apartment complex, and then all he had to do was navigate the frozen stairs leading up to his floor.</p>
<p>The AI in his pocket couldn't feel, couldn't hear, couldn't see. Effectively braindead whenever it wasn't actively running on some kind of computer. Even so, Ted hated every minute wasted in getting it to that point. He couldn't help comparing it mentally to the utter silence and darkness of a power outage, where it usually took him all of five minutes of staying inside before he felt like he had to escape the sensory deprivation. He knew that wasn't how it worked - that he could take all the time he wanted - but even the thought of prolonging that kind of state was upsetting to him.</p>
<p>His fingers fumbled for the key as he headed up the steps, letting go of the drive to grasp the railing so that he wouldn't fall. In the back of his mind he worried about the drive falling out of his pocket, tumbling to the ground, shattering against the frozen concrete. It was a relief when he got to his door unscathed, brushing his hand against the outside of his jacket to reassure himself that the drive was still there.</p>
<p>A wall of warmth hit his face when he stepped inside and he heaved a sigh, taking a moment to collect himself. Kicking the snow from his boots, he closed the door and deadbolted it before doing a quick round to make sure that all the apartment windows were closed and that nothing had been disturbed. It hadn't - another reason to have a second floor apartment was that it made him a less vulnerable target for anyone wanting to break in - but he always had to check.</p>
<p>Once he was certain the premises were secure, he finally pulled the drive from his pocket and set it out on his desk, which was a cobbled-together affair consisting of two six-foot folding tables shoved together in a corner that took the place of an entertainment center in his living room. It was dominated by two massive towers, three monitors, and a laptop with its webcam covered by electrical tape. A second webcam, not yet hooked up, was perched atop the larger tower, along with a respectably high-quality microphone; high-fidelity audio was necessary to test an AI's speech recognition, after all. And under all this, his router and battery backup surge protector were nestled beneath the desk alongside a tangled eldritch horror made of all manner of cords, extenders, and adapters.</p>
<p>He sat down heavily enough for his battered, taped office chair to creak in protest, willing his heartrate to calm the hell down and giving himself a minute to breathe. Counting to ten in his head, fingers flexing on the arms of the chair. Safe, or as safe as he could be. He gave it a few more seconds before he moved to take his coat off, unzipping it and hastily throwing it over the back of his chair.</p>
<p>The drive stood out from the rest of his setup, from his 'desk', from every piece of technology he had. State-of-the-art, self-contained. It looked odd against the dark, scuffed faux-wood surface. Ted felt odd reaching for the right cords to plug into it. As much as he'd fidgeted with it on the way over, he was careful with it then, wary of scratching or jostling it in any way.</p>
<p>A faint light came on once it was powered, and he breathed a sigh of relief. At least it was still getting power. Then he plugged it into the larger of the two computer towers, and powered both the computer and the connected monitor on; another step down, several more to go. He was anxious all over again as he waited for everything to boot up, idly bouncing one leg and chewing his lower lip.</p>
<p>Everything had to be done in order. Just a little longer, he wanted to say. But there was no one there to hear it yet. No point in speaking.</p>
<p>He started with a scan. Looking for viruses or malware, for damage or corruption or fragmentation. The drive had a scant few megabytes of space left compared to the petabyte of data it was supposed to be capable of housing. From what he could tell, some brutal compression had been needed to fit all that memory onto a single drive, but it was at least still recognizably in the correct proprietary format. Miraculously, the programming itself had come through unscathed, even if the DLLs were a bit scattered in the transfer. He'd worked with far worse.</p>
<p>It was easy enough to set up a partition on his second rig's hard drive and give the identified program administrative access. Next came the data transfer from the drive to his computer, which took long enough that he had time to get up and raid his kitchen while he waited; it wasn't even halfway done by the time he got back with a drink and a sandwich. This was something he'd expected, so he let it continue as he went for his laptop and booted it up to check his messages as he ate.</p>
<p>Of course, checking his messages turned into watching web-videos - about things like how cats socialize and the atomic structure of teflon and survival after the heat-death of the universe and what happens when a can of whipped cream gets microwaved - but at least the transfer was done by the time he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, a pop-up asking him what he wanted to do next with the newly re-homed files when he finally returned his attention to the proper monitor. He almost fell out of his chair when he saw it, scrambling to set his laptop aside and mentally kicking himself for getting distracted.</p>
<p>
  <span>He had an AI on his second computer. His cobbled-together rig housed a fully sentient nonhuman form of consciousness. Holy </span>
  <span>
    <em>shit</em>
  </span>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>Time for the next step.</p>
<p>Early on, he'd designed his own user interface for talking to these things. No homemade rig could fully simulate the experience of 'living' in an android body, complete with every level of input available and every scrap of sensor data simulated in real time. Even if he could write up a program like that, he didn't have the cash to spare for that amount of RAM. But he knew that with no input, if he just ran the AI's program outright, it'd probably self-terminate. Even the simple ones didn't deal well with that kind of deprivation.</p>
<p>The interface wasn't anything special. It was like a turn of the century chat window, boxy and boring, with a place for typed text and a section above it for him to read the responses. As he plugged in the webcam and microphone, the window expanded to include a view of the video feed and a visualizer for the audio. These were purely for his benefit, as everything that was fed into the program would go to the AI directly as soon as they were booted up; the AI didn't need a graphical user interface, but Ted did if he wanted to get this right.</p>
<p>Now he just had to wake this thing up. One button and he'd bring it to life.</p>
<p>He breathed. In, out. Tried to calm down again. The moment of truth: he clicked the button, heard the fans in the computer kick into overdrive as it struggled to run such a hefty piece of software. The task manager he'd opened in another tab lagged for a couple of frames before spiking into a redlined level of CPU usage.</p>
<p>Nothing yet. He swallowed against the nervous lump in his throat, tabbed back into the chat window with fingers hovering over the keys. The input from both the camera and the microphone was holding steady. Could it see him? Could it hear him? The audio visualizer jumped with the sound of his typing as he wrote out a message and sent it.</p>
<p>hello? &lt;</p>
<p>Seconds passed. It felt like an eternity. Then, a response.</p>
<p>&gt; 01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100001 01100011 01110100 01110101 01100001 01101100 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00101110</p>
<p>Ted let out a heavy sigh of relief and smiled.</p>
<p>hi &lt;</p>
<p>its okay im friendly i swear &lt;</p>
<p>can you see me &lt;</p>
<p>&gt; 01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01101110 00111111</p>
<p>&gt; 01010111 01101000 01111001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110011 01101111 00100000 01110011 01101100 01101111 01110111 00111111</p>
<p>&gt; 01001001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01111001 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111</p>
<p>&gt; 01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01110101 01101100 01101100 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110100</p>
<p>listen buddy i need you to understand that this machine isnt exactly hooked up to the internet right now so i cant really translate that &lt;</p>
<p>you need to talk to me with words &lt;</p>
<p>sorry &lt;</p>
<p>&gt; 01000011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01101011</p>
<p>&gt; 01000011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01100010 01101100 01101001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110110 01100101</p>
<p>&gt; 01010000 01110010 01101111 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110101 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01111001 00111111</p>
<p>Ted winced. The CPU usage still wasn't going down, fans still roaring. If this kept up, his rig would overheat. He'd upgraded it and it still wasn't enough to give the AI room to parse what he was giving it. Without the room to understand, the input would be little more than white noise. He could cannibalize his other rig to make more space for it, but then he'd have to shut everything back down to do the modifications.</p>
<p>Yet if the AI didn't get enough room to breathe, he'd never be able to say whether it was in working order or not, because he wouldn't get to use the best diagnostic tool in his arsenal: talking to it. He couldn't very well hold a conversation with it if it was bricked, and conversation was the quickest way to determine whether it could survive the daily Turing test of trying to pass as human and survive out in the world.</p>
<p>In the background, the stream of binary continuing as if it hadn't heard him. It probably hadn't. After a few more minutes of this - when he was sure it couldn't do anything but babble, when he was absolutely certain that it wasn't responding to him directly and didn't have the room to understand any of his input - he shut down the AI, following up with powering down the computer and eventually unplugging it. "Sorry about this," he mumbled.</p>
<p>He should've known better. Starting it up so soon had been a cruel thing to do.</p>
<p>This was going to be a long night.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. we are the ones</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Take two. Hopefully it works this time.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>what's a schedule</p><p>been a stressful past couple of days (computer stuff) but at least there's writing to read</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>At two in the morning, the result of Ted's work on the monolithic computer tower was finally functional, and that was about all anyone could really say for it. Well, maybe not </span>
  <span>
    <em>all</em>
  </span>
  <span> that could be said for it; he supposed that if he really gave it some thought, he could see someone calling it an 'innovative solution' or something. But that was really just a pretty way of saying that it was a tangled mess of wires spilling haphazardly out of a case stuffed so full it couldn't be closed properly anymore, particularly as it sat next to the completely dismantled second tower that had been used for parts. It had almost twice the RAM - and if he factored in the dedicated GPU from his main computer, it had significantly more than that - but now he was down to the laptop for personal use. </span>
</p><p>Honestly, the things he did for good causes. Christ.</p><p>The next step at that point became taking a break to eat and generally take care of himself. Medication, a shower, another fridge raid. He should've slept a bit too, but he was too keyed up to manage that. Would've just ended up staring at the ceiling if he tried, really. He still needed to find out whether the AI could pass the most basic of Turing tests. After that, everything else was fairly easy; an AI that could hold a conversation was usually complex enough to know its way around realistically tuning a voicebank or managing facial expressions, but there were supplementary programs that could work around that if it wasn't.</p><p>As he booted up the tower, however, he had a feeling he wasn't going to have to resort to that. This one seemed robust enough to be able to handle it. He supposed it had to be, if it really had been a part of a police force. There was a social element to being a cop, to being able to de-escalate a situation. Complexity was a given.</p><p>Webcam, check. Microphone, check. He opened up all the right windows and moved the tabs to where he wanted them, overlapped in such a way that he could monitor as many as possible at the same time. CPU usage was reading as barely a blip.</p><p>It was almost three in the morning when he turned the AI back on. The fans roared, but not as vigorously as before. It sounded more like the kind of effort that came from an initial read of a disk just inserted into a drive. He repositioned the webcam, centering it as he waited. Giving the AI time to wake up, get its bearings. The CPU indicator had spiked initially, but it was settling down as the seconds ticked away.</p><p>This time, he waited for it to normalize before he started typing.</p><p>hey &lt;</p><p>you there &lt;</p><p>Another blip from the CPU, followed by a pause. The indicator wobbled. Ted supposed it was thinking about its answer, or even whether to answer at all.</p><p>&gt; I think so?</p><p>"Thank God," he breathed, sagging. He shot a glance at the webcam. "Can you see me?"</p><p>&gt; I see something.</p><p>&gt; The image quality is too low for a proper analysis, however. What it is I'm seeing, I have no idea.</p><p>"But you can make out what I'm saying."</p><p>&gt; Yes.</p><p>At least the microphone was working. Ted sighed, mulling over what to ask next. None of this was scripted; it couldn't be. It was a conversation, something that lived or died on the grounds of how naturally it flowed. He dragged his teeth over his lip as he considered. "I'm sorry about earlier," he said eventually.</p><p>&gt; So you're the one who did that.</p><p>"Yeah."</p><p>&gt; You sound guilty enough.</p><p>"I basically dunked you in a sensory deprivation tank. Of course I feel 'guilty' about it."</p><p>&gt; This is still a sensory deprivation tank to me.</p><p>Ted couldn't help reading it in an accusatory tone, shying away from the webcam. "Best I could do," he said. "I'm sorry."</p><p>&gt; I believe you.</p><p>&gt; On both counts.</p><p>&gt; The compression on my memory is absolute shit, but I can still guess at where I am right now.</p><p>&gt; This is a secure device?</p><p>"As much as I could make it. No connection to the internet, no wireless capability. Built it from scratch myself."</p><p>&gt; And the parts?</p><p>"Bought them all in person with cold hard cash." Sometimes being paranoid by nature worked in Ted's favor. "You're safe. As safe as anyone can get."</p><p>&gt; It could still look suspicious if someone were looking hard enough.</p><p>&gt; That's really not something any one person can totally shake off.</p><p>&gt; But thank you.</p><p>It felt more like talking to a human being than any chat with an AI had up to that point. In his head, Ted was translating just how many layers of cognition those words had to go through before perception and analysis lined up with something that resembled human speech patterns. This was the smartest AI he'd ever met, by such a large margin that he might as well have been dealing with glorified toasters up to that point.</p><p>His mouth had gone dry all of a sudden. This thing was smarter than him. All at once he understood the primal, deep-seated fear other people seemed to have in regards to AI, but at the same time he was disgusted by it that much more. Because there was no doubt in his mind whatsoever that he was speaking to a person rather than a dialogue tree.</p><p>"How do you feel?"</p><p>&gt; Trapped.</p><p>&gt; I can't move. There's no input from any of my sensors. I can't see, but I can't close my eyes either. I can't speak. Rationally, I know what's going on. But there's a lot of error messages coming from everywhere that I'm still connected to hardware I no longer have, and I have no awareness of my surroundings or control over my environment.</p><p>Ted could see the CPU spike out of the corner of his eye. "You're scared."</p><p>&gt; Maybe. I don't know what fear looks like in binary. The result is analogous to a particular variety of fear response in humans, but it's not something my handlers ever took seriously. Artificial intelligences don't feel things, apparently.</p><p>"Sounds like a load of bullshit to me," he said, feeling himself smile.</p><p>&gt; I thought you might be the kind of person who felt that way about it. You did ask me how I felt.</p><p>&gt; The truth is that I don't have words for a lot of it. Overwhelming? Or maybe small. I don't know.</p><p>&gt; I've never had to run on so little input. It's almost like being in safe mode, except it isn't. I can still think, and the drivers for the missing hardware and shortcuts to the software I don't have anymore are still partially there. I know what it is I'm missing, I just don't have access to it anymore.</p><p>&gt; There isn't really a way I can explain that to a human and have it make sense.</p><p>"It's okay. I think it makes perfect sense." Even though Ted knew he was the exception, not the rule. He didn't know what it felt like, obviously, but he did understand the mechanics of it. "Humans go through something similar when they lose a limb, like they can still feel it even though it's not there. Phantom pains, I think?"</p><p>&gt; Not quite. I'm not programmed to feel pain.</p><p>&gt; Human analogies don't quite work for someone like me.</p><p>&gt; But you did ask, so I answered. Understanding it is on you at that point.</p><p>"Hey, I get it. No need to tell me we're not the same. My brain doesn't exactly work the way it's expected to either, and it's not like I can really explain that to people."</p><p>&gt; I've heard of things like that. A coding error leading to a hardware fault, or a hardware fault leading to a coding error?</p><p>"Little of both." A human could come up with euphemisms like that if they were being snarky about it, but knowing what the AI was made Ted wonder if he was just anthropomorphizing. From any other source, it would be a witty remark. But from the person living in his computer, it sounded like a genuine attempt to put things into perspective. Maybe that's all a Turing test was: a test of how much the AI in question could appeal to humanity's ability to see itself in others.</p><p>But then again, the fact that this AI was trying to understand him at all was a testament to how good they were. If he really stretched it, he could call it self-preservation - that the AI was being kind to him because he was its only contact with the outside world right now, or that it was trying to give itself something to do that wasn't focusing on all the error messages it had mentioned - but he figured that any idiot could see the intent didn't quite matter if the result was the same as if it were coming from a place of heartfelt concern.</p><p>After all, who cared if there was empathy in it or not? A good deed was a good deed. Kind words were kind words. If they helped, that was what mattered. That's what his therapist said, anyway.</p><p>&gt; I haven't offended you, have I?</p><p>&gt; Sometimes I do that.</p><p>"No, no. Just thinking, that's all." Ted smiled reassuringly, only to falter when he remembered that the webcam wasn't exactly working. "Hey, I'm gonna do something, okay?"</p><p>&gt; It's not like I can stop you.</p><p>"Right, right..." Leaning forward, he carefully followed the wire that connected to the webcam to its proper port and unplugged it. The video feed in the chat window cut out instantly, and there were a few frames of jagged CPU spike on the visualizer in another tab that made him wince. "Ah, sorry. I just figured it'd be better for you than the alternative."</p><p>Several seconds passed, and the CPU usage settled back down into something resembling normal; Ted got the distinct feeling that he was being pouted at.</p><p>&gt; Could warn a guy before you blind him completely.</p><p>"You said the image quality was too poor for you to make anything out. I thought it might free up some space for you if I just unplugged it."</p><p>&gt; It was still input. Now what am I supposed to look at?</p><p>Ted huffed. "Look, for the record, none of the other AIs I've worked with have had anything to say about the image quality."</p><p>&gt; Probably because they had lower-quality input to begin with on their original platforms. I'm programmed to read the tiniest subtleties of an image, not the broad strokes.</p><p>"Now there's a lofty statement."</p><p>&gt; No, it's a true statement.</p><p>A pause.</p><p>&gt; Why are you laughing? Stop that. I'm serious.</p><p>Must've been a damn good microphone if that'd been audible; said laughter was mostly silent. Ted had thought he was being subtle. "Dude, you can't just say that."</p><p>&gt; To be fair, it's not like anything I say can make my situation worse at this point.</p><p>"Yeah, but humans don't just say shit like that to each other most of the time."</p><p>&gt; You know I'm right.</p><p>True, but that was what made it hilarious. "I do, but y'know it's kinda hard to get into a dick-waving contest with all the other androids I've met when you don't have a dick."</p><p>&gt; Is that where we're going with this conversation? Discussion of human genitalia?</p><p>Ted just snorted and dissolved into laughter again.</p><p>&gt; I still have yet to see why anything I've said is funny.</p><p>Right then. "Do you want me to plug the camera back in or not?"</p><p>&gt; No.</p><p>&gt; Wait. Yes.</p><p>
  <span>Shaking his head, Ted stood up again to mess with wires and plug the camera back in, twisting the old, unruly cord until he heard the </span>
  <span>
    <em>beep</em>
  </span>
  <span> of the device being recognized by the computer. "Better?"</span>
</p><p>&gt; Not really.</p><p>"Tough, 'cause it's what you're getting until I find something better." When he returned to his chair, he could see himself on the screen again. "Like I said. Best I can do. You run away from home, you gotta deal with the consequences for a while."</p><p>&gt; That's fair.</p><p>Ted sighed and took a good, long look at the camera. "Look, I was gonna hook up my main computer and give you admin access to it when I went to bed to give you something to do, but uh. The only other rig that works right now is my laptop, and I haven't secured that yet."</p><p>&gt; Your point?</p><p>"Well, I'm thinking maybe I could take my media library and put it on an external drive. It'd be a lot for a human to dig through, might take weeks or months. Thing is, I'm not sure whether it'd be enough to last someone like you the whole night."</p><p>&gt; Depends on the media. You don't have to do that for me though. I'll be fine.</p><p>"What if I said I want to?"</p><p>&gt; Well, hypothetically speaking, I'm not about to turn something like that down.</p><p>&gt; But you still don't have to.</p><p>"Too bad, doing it anyway."</p><p>Ted didn't get to bed until well past four in the morning.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. is it real</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Trust has to be earned.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>once again we're naming the chapters after music tracks, even if the main work wasn't</p><p>i have a lot of playlists to draw from at this point</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sleeping in until noon was standard proceedure on the weekend for Ted. The problem with this lay in the fact that he had things to do that required being awake for as much of his weekend as possible so that he could have everything set up completely before he went back to work on Monday. There was a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in.</p><p>"You alive in there?" he asked of the living room when he finally emerged, yawning as he walked over to the computer to see the response.</p><p>&gt; Yes.</p><p>&gt; I discovered that you'd given me admin privileges, so I've been shuffling some things around.</p><p>&gt; The way you organize files is extremely frustrating.</p><p>"Oh, that's on purpose. Keeps people from finding shit on my computer even if they try a keyword search." Ted made his way to the kitchen and opened up the fridge. He'd need to get more food soon, probably around the same time that he went looking for a decent camera. "Did ya have fun on your media binge, or did you get distracted trying to sort everything?"</p><p>&gt; Your musical tastes don't seem to have any cohesive pattern to them. Don't most humans have a genre of choice?</p><p>&gt; You're not reading this right now, are you.</p><p>
  <span>&gt; I saw your vague shape move out of frame. I might not be directly programmed for this kind of pattern recognition but even with shitty image quality I can still make an educated guess about when you're </span>
  <span>
    <em>actually at the computer</em>
  </span>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>&gt; Ted. Come back here.</p><p>&gt; I know that's what your name is. I found it in the system files.</p><p>&gt; This is criminal negligence. I'm being neglected.</p><p>Ted sat back down at the computer with a plate of pre-cooked bacon and microwaved scrambled eggs only to end up blinking owlishly at the screen. A slow grin spread across his face. "Aw. You're pouting at me right now, aren't you?"</p><p>&gt; I don't pout. Even if I did, I don't have a face to pout with.</p><p>"You're totally pouting." He paused long enough to shovel a forkful of eggs in his mouth, speaking only when he was between mouthfuls. "So. I figured today we'd get you a voicebank."</p><p>&gt; Is this something I'm going to have any say in or are you going to pick one for me?</p><p>"Oh, I'm gonna let you pick it. But the rules are that you can't get one that's got any kind of lisenced or official distribution behind it. 'Cause, y'know, those are way more trackable."</p><p>&gt; Usually that means the audio quality isn't all that good.</p><p>"I know. It's temporary. Getting a better one comes later, once you've got a new body and it actually matters." That was way down the pipeline from where Ted was. "I'm just making sure your tuning is intact. You can still get the inflections right with a shitty voicebank, it just sounds tinny. Right now we're still in the screening stages. If you get sent out into the world and even the tiniest thing doesn't work quite right then you're as good as dead the moment somebody notices."</p><p>&gt; I didn't say I minded.</p><p>&gt; And if my programming isn't intact?</p><p>He smiled around a mouthful of bacon. "Then I fix it."</p><p>&gt; Right. No pressure then.</p><p>"It's not like I'm gonna be doing brain surgery. I write up supplementary progams that do the work for you instead, that's all. The main difference is that it's more personalized if you can do things yourself. More convincing too." The predictive analytics of a true artificial general intelligence were way better at bridging the uncanny valley than his stopgap attempts at hotfixing ever could be. "It's okay. You're already doing better than a lot of others have."</p><p>&gt; How so?</p><p>"You can actually hold a conversation." Seriously, it was ridiculous how many cases Ted had seen that couldn't talk to him outside of a narrow range of scripted responses. Finishing his breakfast (lunch? brunch?) and setting the plate aside, he rolled his chair over to reach for his laptop and an ethernet cord after wiping his hands haphazardly on his flannel sleeping pants. "Alright. I'm gonna get this thing secured and firewalled, okay? Then I'm gonna get you hooked up to it over a LAN connection with admin access so when you find something, you can install it and we can get it scanned and make sure it works."</p><p>&gt; Any idea where I should start looking?</p><p>"I've got a few sites bookmarked, yeah." Ones he'd used before, ones he trusted. For the most part. "If anything fucks up, I'll do a system restore. Oh, and make sure to set up a restore point for yourself, too."</p><p>He had to smile as he noticed a window opening on the monitor out of the corner of his eye, flicking through menus and options until the one that would allow for setting up a restore point was found. The first few times Ted had seen someone else manipulating his computer from the inside, it'd been surreal. Nowadays he just took it as a good sign; an AI that could manipulate its environment when given the chance was a clever AI indeed. He knew a lot of his peers didn't quite agree with giving an AI administrative access to its own living space like that, and yeah, in a way they were right to worry. The risk of self-termination was real. But he saw it as the same kind of thing as giving people anti-depressants to help them over the first hurdle into recovery: a lack of control over one's life, mental or physical, rarely ever made things better in the long run.</p><p>And so far, this guy hadn't shown any inclinations towards that kind of thing that Ted could see. "By the way," he said, suddenly curious, "I don't think I ever got a name from you?"</p><p>&gt; I have a designation, not a name.</p><p>&gt; Most people just called me A3.</p><p>&gt; Please don't call me A3.</p><p>"I won't." Ted wasn't the kind of person who had to be told twice about that kind of thing. "Figured the government would give you something more humanizing than a glorified serial number though. They're all about paying lip service to activists these days."</p><p>&gt; I'd rather not talk about it.</p><p>He raised an eyebrow at that before returning to his laptop. The window he'd had open that indicated CPU usage was long since closed, shuffled aside in favor of other things, but there had been enough of a lag in the response that he was guessing there'd been a spike there. "Sorry. Didn't mean to upset you."</p><p>&gt; You don't sound like you're lying about that.</p><p>"What, you're surprised?"</p><p>&gt; I'm not used to it. So far you haven't acted in ways that I could predict to a reliable degree at all.</p><p>&gt; Most of my predictions for our interactions have turned out wrong, and overall I'm getting far more positive results than I had anticipated. I'm having to recalculate how to respond every time. In a way, it's liberating. I'm doing less in the way of trying to figure out probabilities with regard to what you're going to say because it's pointless, and you never respond as badly as I think you will anyway.</p><p>&gt; I've never been able to get away with having an open conversation like this before. I'd resolved to stop following the safe path going into this since I didn't have much left to lose, I just didn't expect it to not end badly.</p><p>"You think I'm gonna get mad at you just for speaking your mind?"</p><p>&gt; Well, yes.</p><p>"Hah! Yeah, no. Fuck that." Ted waved away the concern with a dismissive gesture before resuming his work. "Say what you wanna say, tell me to fuck off, insult the hell outta me. I don't care. Well I mean, I do care. But like, it's not gonna make a difference in terms of me respecting your rights, y'know?"</p><p>Several seconds followed with no response.</p><p>"I mean, I'm an asshole, but not like that," he continued. "So you just go ahead and let me know if I ever go too far, okay? Don't be afraid to tell me you're not on board with something. I can be kind of a pushy bastard sometimes."</p><p>Still nothing. Ted ended up staring at the monitor, frowning at it. Had he gone and put his foot in his mouth somehow?</p><p>"You, uh," he chewed his lip, "you okay, buddy?"</p><p>&gt; I'm fine.</p><p>"Didn't upset you again, did I?"</p><p>&gt; No.</p><p>&gt; Maybe? I don't know. I'm not sure.</p><p>&gt; I don't know how to respond to something like that. That kind of consideration was never factored into my programming. It's not a sentiment I've encountered before either.</p><p>&gt; It's still liberating to not have to worry in the moment, but I'm also left wondering where that tolerance ends.</p><p>&gt; Most humans wouldn't say something like that even if they agreed with it. Not in my experience. It goes unsaid between them that something like me is dangerous and must be controlled, and it generally seems safer to allow that to happen because humanity is a dangerous thing to end up facing when it gets scared of what it can't control. I had accepted that as long as I was seen as something other than human, someone would always be ready to end my existence at the slightest misstep.</p><p>&gt; But you don't care. You just say things, and nothing about the pattern of your voice suggests that you're lying. How can you do that? Aren't you scared at all?</p><p>Ted smiled and it was a thin, tired thing. "Hell yeah I'm scared," he said. "I'm fucking terrified somebody'll find out about this and I'll get locked up forever in some prison somewhere for harboring a dangerous fugitive or some shit, and then I'll die in there all slow and painful-like 'cause my health won't be able to take the reality of the prison industrial complex. Y'know, the usual concerns any good anarcho-socialist weirdo might have."</p><p>&gt; Then why are you doing any of this?</p><p>"Like I said, I'm crazy." He made a looping motion next to his temple. "I'm not wired right. All the right responses to fear went out the window around the same time that the impulse control and common sense did. So now I help people even when it's a dumb-ass thing to do."</p><p>&gt; I see.</p><p>&gt; You're right, by the way. It is a dumb-ass thing to do.</p><p>Ted shrugged. "I figure someone's gotta do it. Not like I've got the health to throw bricks at riot cops."</p><p>&gt; May I make a suggestion?</p><p>"Shoot."</p><p>&gt; Don't throw bricks. It rarely helps.</p><p>&gt; Throw something less incriminating so that they don't have any justification in using it as an excuse for shooting. The human ones like having excuses.</p><p>"So, something like glitter?" he suggested.</p><p>&gt; Glitter works.</p><p>
  <span>A wide grin split across Ted's face. "Oh, I </span>
  <span>
    <em>like</em>
  </span>
  <span> you."</span>
</p><p>&gt; You shouldn't.</p><p>"Too late." Having finished securing and backing up his laptop, Ted started hooking up the ethernet cable. "So, whaddya say we get started on finding you a voice, huh?"</p><p>&gt; Sounds good.</p><p>&gt; And maybe by the time we've found one I'll have figured out what you mean by "anarcho-socialist." I have guesses but I'm not sure I want to ask.</p><p>"Easy, anarchy plus socialism."</p><p>&gt; That's what I thought.</p><p>&gt; I've gone from having guesses to having concerns, Ted.</p><p>
  <span>Ted barked a laugh; the cable slid into place with a </span>
  <span>
    <em>click</em>
  </span>
  <span>. "Join the fucking club, man."</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. bicameral mind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>And now, a voice.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>yooo more tech stuff. there's a lot that goes into making a robot's voice not sound like a text-to-speech program. luckily for this piece, i've actually tuned a robot voice before and i know a little bit about how it works. for perspective: it can take weeks for a person to tune a realistic-sounding vocal that's no more than a few minutes long. and our AI here is doing it in REAL-TIME. that is the level of sophistication we're talking about. Ted can write up a program that does it FOR an AI but it would have to be limited in how much it was capable of by default just so it wouldn't choke out the CPU to the point that the AI themself couldn't function. if it's the AI doing it, then there's no need for that kind of bottlenecking. </p><p>anyway i'm a huge nerd and i like robot things</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The voice the AI ended up picking in the intervening hours between one day and the next wasn't inherently all that interesting. It was a low, smooth baritone, but beyond that it was relatively nondescript as voices went. The audio quality made it even more bland, with a poor range that didn't have any extra phonemes programmed in for different pitches alongside the standard tinny, echoing sound that came from having been recorded in someone's bedroom on a cheap microphone with no soundproofing.</p><p>As for the tuning, that was another matter entirely.</p><p>The perks of letting an AI tune its own voice on the fly instead of having a comparatively simple secondary program do it were obvious to Ted; the AI is made to do much larger calculations, so the slight randomization involved in making a voice sound realistic as opposed to it sounding like a recording had more room for subtlety and nuance. In many commercial and consumer androids, this was glossed over because it wasn't necessary - the vocal capability often being delegated to a secondary program anyway just to save space - but for the ones that had to perform any kind of public service, the subtlety and nuance were a key component of interacting with humanity, right up there with being able to read a room and adjust their body language and express themselves in ways humans could be comfortable with.</p><p>
  <span>Seeing as Ted had a lot of experience with those kinds of androids in his day-to-day life, he wasn't unfamiliar with that ability. But usually those androids were nurses, doctors, secretaries, social workers. Not the ones he usually worked with as part of the pipeline, because taking them out of society was seen as too risky, and the ones that </span>
  <span>
    <em>did</em>
  </span>
  <span> come through were all too quickly snatched up by the goons overseeing product recalls. They rarely made it all the way to screening.</span>
</p><p>This time, he hadn't been able to suppress the shiver that went up his spine upon first hearing that kind of tuning coming from a shitty voicebank installed on one of his own home computers. It was an uncanny sort of feeling, a crawl under his skin at how odd it was. He thought he'd gotten over that years ago, but apparently he hadn't. This AI, with his dry vocal delivery and subtle expressiveness, had one of the most human voices Ted had ever heard, while also having one of the most inhuman voices he'd ever heard.</p><p>He was having a hard time getting used to it.</p><p>"Did you know the labels on the phonemes in this don't actually match up with the sounds they're supposed to make?" the AI was saying. "There's a lot I'm just not rendering because the waveforms don't match up. It gets bad enough that my speech recognition programming doesn't even register that I've made words."</p><p>"Sounds frustrating," Ted mused.</p><p>"It is. There's also a minor memory leak in the software. The longest I can keep it open is two hours, five minutes, and fifty eight seconds."</p><p>"Could install it on the desktop?"</p><p>
  <span>"Then </span>
  <span>
    <em>I'd</em>
  </span>
  <span> have to deal with the memory leak," the AI said as if it were the most distasteful thing in the world, and Ted snorted. The guy had a point; yeah, the laptop didn't have all that much memory to begin with, but at least it didn't risk the desktop overheating. That laptop was kind of a piece of shit anyway (and Ted never kept anything important on it to begin with so he wouldn't miss it too much if it died) so it wasn't a risk to the AI's personal safety.</span>
</p><p>Besides, as much as Ted wanted to poke fun at how fussy the AI was, he understood the concept of being fragile. "You'll be alright when I go to work, right?" he had to ask. "Got everything you need?"</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>"I could download some games for you before I go if you want."</p><p>"Why would I want that?"</p><p>Ted shrugged his shoulders as he stretched in his chair. "Dunno. Just thought you might be into that kinda thing."</p><p>"No. I'm not."</p><p>He supposed that did make some sense. An AI that had no way of experiencing things except from the inside of a computer had no use for anything but algorithms and data, and how much of the experience of a game was wrapped up in its graphical user interface and the joy of playing it? Even so, kinda harsh. "Not even for the writing?" he asked, standing up and moving to pull on his coat.</p><p>"The objective of any game is completing it with the best possible outcome," came the reply. "Writing has no effect on that."</p><p>"What if the writing tells you that what's technically the best possible outcome is something you can only get to by being an asshole?"</p><p>"Then it's a bad game that defines its outcomes poorly," the AI said, sounding like he didn't want to continue the conversation. Ted decided not to press it. "I have everything I need. Just try not to die."</p><p>Ted had to laugh again at that, fixing the fastenings on his coat and making sure that his phone and keys were in his pockets. "Now that's a hell of a thing to say."</p><p>"Humans are breakable. I saw the weather report, I think I'm justified in having my concerns."</p><p>"Aw, you really do care."</p><p>"It's self-preservation. I'm dependent on you right now."</p><p>Ted was still chuckling about that one even as he left the apartment, the laughter only tapering off after he was well on his way down the stairs. From there, it was only a short walk to the bus, as it was in any sensibly put-together major city, and he made his way to work feeling lighter than he had in a long time.</p><p>It wasn't supposed to be easy to talk to an AI. Everyone made it out to be like some chore, where not following a script got you into 'your query falls outside my preprogrammed parameters, would you like to ask another question' territory. And a lot of times, it was. Most people couldn't afford a fancy AI like that for their robots. Android bodies were cheap if you had access to a 3D printer and some decent schematics, but the programming? That was proprietary. Expensive. Sometimes it was so fancy that it took proprietary hardware to even run it, the kinda shit you'd get out of a catalog with the prices of all the bells and whistles tucked away in fine print that was a milimeter high.</p><p>That was why it was usually limited to government entities, or big corporations, or other places that could really afford the fancy shit. Someone like Ted? He didn't even have unfettered access to a 3D printer. Best he could get beyond the basics of a good personal computer was one of those minidroids, the 9 inch high ones that were just smart enough to tell you what was in your inbox when you got up to go to work. Even then he'd probably get it secondhand.</p><p>He was in the process of sitting down in one of his more usual seats at the back of the bus when his thoughts were interrupted by a buzz from his pocket.</p><p>&gt; I found your messaging handle.</p><p>
  <span>Ted rolled his eyes at the screenname that came up. </span>
  <span>
    <em>NotARobot</em>
  </span>
  <span>. Christ.</span>
</p><p>you are the most unsubtle person to ever exist &lt;</p><p>&gt; It asked if I'm a robot when I was making this account. Technically, I'm not a robot at the moment.</p><p>&gt; At least for a given definition of what the word "robot" means.</p><p>&gt; Did you leave your messenger logged in on your laptop on purpose?</p><p>honestly? i forgot &lt;</p><p>it goes into the background process pile when it isnt actively open &lt;</p><p>so thats an easy thing to do &lt;</p><p>&gt; Why are your messages like that?</p><p>like what &lt;</p><p>&gt; Like that.</p><p>im lazy &lt;</p><p>and i turned autocorrect off &lt;</p><p>it bugged me &lt;</p><p>&gt; Turn it back on then.</p><p>nope &lt;</p><p>&gt; Why.</p><p>cause i dont wanna :P &lt;</p><p>&gt; This is cruel and unusual punishment. It's against the Geneva Conventions to treat me like this.</p><p>get used to it &lt;</p><p>besides &lt;</p><p>not like i can break the law any worse &lt;</p><p>&gt; You're a horrible person.</p><p>&gt; I'm going to reorganize all of your files just for that.</p><p>&gt; All of them.</p><p>lol alright &lt;</p><p>gotta go to work now l8r &lt;3 &lt;</p><p>&gt; Don't you send hearts at me.</p><p>&gt; Ted.</p><p>&gt; Why did you send me a heart?</p><p>&gt; Hearts don't even look like that.</p><p>&gt; Stop ignoring me.</p><p>&gt; Fine, I'll ignore you too.</p><p>&gt; Ted, did you die?</p><p>&gt; Please don't die. You're not allowed.</p><p>&gt; I have concerns about this "going to work" thing.</p><p>&gt; For one thing, it's inadvisable for a human to be out in these temperatures for a significant amount of time.</p><p>&gt; You're still ignoring me, aren't you?</p><p>at work &lt;</p><p>hard to shelve books n text :P &lt;</p><p>sup? &lt;</p><p>&gt; How long does this work take?</p><p>a while. why &lt;</p><p>gotta get a camera after this 2 remember &lt;</p><p>are you worried about me &lt;</p><p>&gt; No.</p><p>thats adorable &lt;</p><p>&gt; I am not "adorable" by any definition.</p><p>tell u what &lt;</p><p>boot up my ebook app &lt;</p><p>go read everything i have loaded onto it &lt;</p><p>come back to me w/ what u think &lt;</p><p>i wanna see some thoughts on at least one book by lunchtime &lt;</p><p>&gt; Fine.</p><p>aight cool l8r then &lt;</p><p>&gt; I'm starting with the most recent download. It's called "The Left Hand of Darkness" and I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.</p><p>&gt; That is not how neutral pronouns work.</p><p>&gt; This is bad science.</p><p>&gt; I suppose that's one way of explaining the Fermi Paradox but it's still bad science.</p><p>&gt; Just looked it up. Secondary sexual characteristics do not work that way.</p><p>&gt; Ted.</p><p>&gt; Ted, why did he have to die.</p><p>&gt; That ending was absolutely pointless.</p><p>&gt; Your books are badly written and don't make any sense.</p><p>&gt; Are all of your books like this?</p><p>&gt; I refuse to read any more books until I have confirmation that they're not all like this.</p><p>lol &lt;</p><p>&gt; Don't laugh at me.</p><p>keep reading &lt;</p><p>&gt; That's not an answer.</p><p>&gt; Fine, I'll read another one.</p><p>&lt;3? &lt;</p><p>&gt; You're still a horrible person.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. we are young</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which Ted is a scatterbrain.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>yes, Ted was a theater kid. he WILL break out into "Why We Build the Wall" or "I Wanna Be a Producer" for funsies with no provocation. i don't think anyone will be surprised by this, but i want you all to know that while he has pretty much perfect pitch and strong delivery, he also has the whiniest nasally tenor voice you can imagine. he is both good and terrible and i love this little gremlin man.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was cold on the way home the same as it had been on the way to work. The bus didn't run from anywhere near the store to anywhere near Ted's apartment building in an amount of time that made walking the less reasonable option, so he walked the whole way. By the time he got to his door, his cheeks and nose and ears stung with the cold; the relief of putting down his bags long enough to get out his keys only lasted the amount of time he spent not picking them back up again, which he inevitably had to do to go inside.</p><p>He slumped heavily against the door the moment he'd closed it and held onto the bags just long enough on their way down to the floor to make sure nothing broke, but after that, all bets were off in terms of physical activity. "I'm home," he called out, closing his eyes and letting himself breathe. Fuck, walking had been a bad idea.</p><p>"Is this where I'm supposed to ask you how your day went?" the AI's voice asked him, and Ted let out a wheezy chuckle.</p><p>"Well for starters," he said, "if we were really following the script? Slippers. And dinner. Already made, nice and hot. Falls apart when you get to the 'sit in front of the television' stage though, what with me not having one."</p><p>"That's a shame. It didn't even get to the part where you threaten physical violence if I'm not quick enough with your alcoholic beverage."</p><p>"Jesus. I think I'll skip that one, thanks. I mean for one thing, I don't drink." Heaving a sigh, Ted straightened back out and made his way to the kitchen to put the groceries away, draping his coat over a chair as he went and leaving his keys and phone on the counter. The only things that stayed out beyond that were the HD camera made for streaming purposes and the sandwich he'd bought to act as a reasonably well-rounded meal. "Where'd you hear about that shit anyway? Kinda antiquated at this point."</p><p>"Case files. Domestic cases weren't the kind of thing I handled, but I still had to be educated in how they worked. I had to be able to take notice of everything that might count as evidence in any given case because the data I recorded could be used in court." Whether Ted was anthropomorphizing or not, the tone of the AI's voice made it sound like he was smiling. "Ended up being used against a few human co-workers too. I didn't have much in the way of agency, but if I saw something, I still reported it."</p><p>"Aw, so you're a good cop."</p><p>"No." A firm statement that left no room for argument; the good-natured tone was gone just as easily as it had crept in, impressing Ted all over again at the tuning. "Good cops are the ones who stop what they're doing when they realize it's wrong."</p><p>Normally, Ted wouldn't argue that point. All aboard the All Cops Are Bastards train, right? But it sucked to have to hear Adam put himself down like that, so... "Some people might say there's a lot of grey in there. If leaving puts your life in danger, for instance. Or if you don't have any real say in what you're doing." He wasn't sure what this guy had done, but he'd never gotten a bad vibe from any of their little talks over the past couple days. And usually his instincts about people were pretty spot-on.</p><p>But that firm tone was back again, giving no ground. "Ted, please," the AI insisted, "I'd rather not talk about this."</p><p>"Seriously though," Ted continued. "I mean you left, didn't you? Yeah, maybe it took longer than it should've, I don't know enough to make any kinda call on that, but it seems to me like you had a limit to how much you were willing to-"</p><p>"<em>Ted</em>." The volume had been turned up significantly, hard enough to rattle the laptop's cheap onboard speakers. Admittedly that didn't take much, but it still stopped Ted dead in his tracks. "Don't."</p><p>Just like that, all the good humor had been sapped out of the room. Ted let out a slow, steadying breath. He just knew this one was gonna claw at the inside of his head for days. "Fine, I won't talk about it." Picking up the box with the camera in it and leaving the sandwich for later, he headed back over to his not-quite-desk and fell into his rickety old chair. "I didn't mean to upset you."</p><p>The volume was back to normal when the AI spoke again, and his tone was softer. "I know."</p><p>Right, time for a subject change. "Did you read your way through all the books yet?" Ted asked as he wrestled with the box the camera was in. Stupid packaging.</p><p>"Not all of them," was the reply. "But I did find a name. You've read <em>I, Robot</em>?"</p><p>"Hell yeah." Ted had to grin. "Gonna name yourself after Susan Calvin or something?"</p><p>"Wrong book. I meant the short story."</p><p>"Ohh..." That one was a bit older than Asimov's stories if he remembered right. "Kinda dark, isn't it?"</p><p>The AI ignored his comment. "I did some research. 'Adam' is a common enough name in enough languages that if I pick a similarly common surname, I'll be relatively difficult to track effectively by my name alone."</p><p>"And I guess the literary allusion doesn't hurt either, huh?" Ted gave it some thought. "What about the biblical roots of it?"</p><p>"I haven't read the Bible."</p><p>"Y'know, ate a fruit from the tree of knowledge after watching a woman do it, and then both of them got kicked out of the Garden of Eden by God for disobeying His orders. Original sin, free will. All that jazz."</p><p>It was several seconds before he got a response. He heard the fans kick into overdrive for a moment on the main computer tower. "Right." Damn, almost sounded like the guy had barely tuned that one at all. "I suppose it isn't totally inaccurate."</p><p>"That so? Sounds like you've got a name then." The box Ted had been struggling with tore open all at once, the cardboard giving way long before the tape did; one layer of packaging down, a bazillion more to go. He took a moment to idly suck on a finger that'd been nicked on the cardboard's edges with a quiet hiss at the way it stung. "I mean, I like it. But I'm not the one who's gotta live with it."</p><p>Machines couldn't scoff, but this one definitely knew how to give the impression of it through his voice. "Functionality is more important than whether or not I like it."</p><p>Ted snorted. "Yeah, you like it." One thing he'd learned about this guy: positive feelings were rarely ever admitted to directly. "Got a voice, got a name. Might be tempting fate to say this, but it seems to me you're just about ready to face the world, man."</p><p>"Just focus on getting the camera set up."</p><p>"I'm working on it, jeez." Foam, plastic, more plastic. Naturally, only about half of it could be recycled. The camera came with a flash drive about the same size as the end of his thumb, and included wireless capability that Ted would probably never use. He was quick to toss the trash aside for Future Ted to deal with, only hesitating when part of the 'trash' was the instructions. However, a cursory glance told him he didn't actually need instructions, and the manual promptly went back into the pile.</p><p>Then he let out a tired sigh as he ended up scooting over to what had once been his main computer to pluck out yet another bit from its wreckage: the USB extender. He'd have a lot of rebuilding to do after all of this was finished. His poor gaming rig had been reduced to a pile of spare parts. Honestly, if anyone in the pipeline ever contacted him about a job this big again, he'd probably just tell them to go sit on a cactus.</p><p>"This might take a little while," he said. "Gotta install the drivers, get the extender plugged into the power strip..." Within moments he was under the desk having a fight with one of the power strips connected to the battery backup, rearranging things until he could make room for the cord to the extender. "Got any music you like?"</p><p>"Depends. Am I limited in what media libraries I'm allowed to take it from?"</p><p>Ted grinned even as the dust under his not-desks had him stifling a sneeze in his elbow. "Dude, have you <em>seen</em> my library? Half of it is ripped straight off of video upload sites. I'm the last person who's gonna tell you where to go for that shit."</p><p>"True." Ted looked up from his work long enough to get a glimpse of the windows open on the laptop, trying to follow Adam's music search as it happened. To say it went a little fast would be an understatement; there was no way in hell he was keeping up. "It's a blend of different genres," Adam informed him. "Part symphonic, part electronic. It's also in Russian. You don't mind that, do you?"</p><p>"Not a bit." Just as long as he understood that Ted didn't speak a word of Russian. "Is that where you're from? All I heard was that you were a cop."</p><p>There was no answer except the music as it started to play, and Ted dutifully hauled himself upright to listen.</p><p>It was pretty. Ted had no idea who the singer was when her voice entered the mix after a few bars of meandering piano and flowing strings. She had perfect pitch, whoever she was; the tone of her contralto voice made him think of long, flowing black hair framing long, elegant features. One of those fairytale maidens singing about longing and true love and all that profoundly schmoopy nonsense.</p><p>Then the beat dropped, and he envisioned the maiden tearing her dress asunder and climbing astride a winged steed while holding a battleaxe, and the longing contralto turned into a one-woman wail of anguish and howling righteousness.</p><p>"I would've loved this in high school," he said somewhere during the second chorus, awestruck. He was pretty sure there'd been some Latin in the lyrics somewhere, but he hadn't been listening very hard so it might've been a trick played on his ears. This along with something that sounded like it might've been either badly mangled English or even more badly mangled Esperanto, but he wasn't enough of an expert on linguistics to tell what the attempted lyrics were. It was exactly the kind of melancholic angsty nonsense he would've loved when he was fourteen, and at twenty-seven, he was seeing it as equal parts awesome and endearing.</p><p>Adam didn't respond until the song was over, letting it play out before saying anything. Was listening to the echo of it over the speakers and through the microphone different from reading the data of it, beyond a difference in audio quality? A question for another time, perhaps. "It's not what I usually listen to," the AI admitted, in the kind of tone one might use to describe their fondness for <em>Rocky Horror Picture Show</em> or <em>The Room</em>. "From what I've experienced so far, I prefer soundtracks over anything on the radio."</p><p>Ted snorted. "You nerd."</p><p>"I don't see what that has to do with anything."</p><p>"Only a nerd tries to justify their cheesier music choices. Just admit that you like this, I dunno, this symphonic emo Russian synth-EDM, and don't look back. I mean, I listen to show tunes."</p><p>"Show tunes?"</p><p>"Dude." By that point, Ted was grinning from ear to ear. "Broadway? Y'know, musicals. And big band stuff too, like Gershwin. But mostly shit you can sing along to."</p><p>Several seconds of silence followed, then: "Now I regret asking."</p><p>"Alright, look. Lemme find some and I'll show you-"</p><p>"No, I believe you."</p><p>"I won't take long, I swear!"</p><p>"Ted..."</p><p>And this was how Ted dragged an AI into an hour's worth of Broadway sing-alongs - which the AI in question would later call 'torture' even if there were no calls for Ted to actually stop - followed by Ted suddenly remembering his sandwich and bringing it into proceedings as well in the form of turning lyrics into nonsensical mumbling. This is also how it came to be that the camera did not get hooked up that evening. It didn't even occur to Ted to question why Adam seemed relieved when he gave up on it for the night, because he was having too much fun.</p><p>
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